In Britain, we continue to honour Remembrance Day every eleventh of November and we think that we remember all those who gave their lives in two world wars for our peace and freedom. It is a sentimental occasion when we eagerly remember our own and rarely stop to think who "all those" actually were. For we did not win alone. We were fortunate to have many allies, some of whom were called on to make sacrifices considerably greater than our own.

November 11 also marks the day in 1918 when Poland regained its independence after 127 years of foreign rule, that independence which, in 1939, Britain formally agreed to uphold and which provided the occasion for our declaration of war on Nazi Gemany. For six years, Poland was Britain's "first ally". Polish squadrons tipped the balance in the Battle of Britain. Polish cryptographers were first to break the Enigma code. Polish divisions fought alongside us at Narvik, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Arnhem and in Normandy. Poland's underground resistance movement, the Home Army (AK), was the first and largest client of our Special Operations Executive.

By 1945, our Polish allies had lost at least six million of their people - half Jewish and half Catholic. But their sacrificies were largely ignored. No place was found for them in our grand post-war victory parade. And the Imperial War Museum has ignored requests to organise a display to mark a key event in Poland's contribution to the allied effort, although commemorative exhibitions are planned in Paris, Berlin and Warsaw.

The critical moment in this tragic story was August 1, 1944 - the outbreak of the Warsaw rising. The Varsovians, who had already endured five years of Nazi savagery, including the brutal suppression of the Ghetto uprising of 1943, decided to co-ordinate their insurgency with the advance of an allied army: 40,000-50,000 half-armed men and woman answered the call to attack the Wehrmacht and SS. They included a more numerous contingent of Jewish fighters than had fought in the Ghetto uprising. Their hopes were boosted by promises that Stalin would settle all differences with the Soviets and by the activity of SOE, which was flying in men and supplies to the very last day and which, in the face of Foreign Office opposition, urged Churchill to provide all assistance.

They expected to hold out for two to six days, and their calculations were not far out. Marshal Rokossovskys's original orders were to put the Soviet Army into Warsaw by August 2. When repelled by the fierce counter-atack of four German Panzer divisions, he submitted a revised plan dated August 8 that proposed the early relief of Warsaw and a colossal drive towards Berlin.

At this point, the rising began to unravel. The SS drafted in heavy reinforcements. Stalin ignored the Polish premier's pleas for a compromise solution; rejected Rokossovsky's revised plan; transferred Soviet reserves to the Balkan Front; described the rising as a "criminal adventure"; and refused landing rights to the RAF Squadron which Churchill had ordered to supply Warsaw from southern Italy.

Warsaw, in consequence, bled to death. With brilliant ingenuity and daring, the Home Army held off the SS for weeks. Germans talked of a second Stalingrad. But civilians were dying at the rate of 2,000 a day. Incessant bombardments reduced the city to rubble. Western aid was woefully inadequate, scores of British, South African, Canadian and Polish aircrews died in vain and the Soviets stood still, eventually watching the battle from across the river. After 66 days, the insurgents capitulated and Warsaw's ruins were razed to the ground.

The Polish commander-in-chief, General Sosnkowski, who had personally advised against the rising, was left to beg his British counterparts for a greater sense of urgency. He was not allowed to take control of the Pol ish Parachute Brigade which had been trained in England for service in Warsaw.

Not for the first or last time, the Poles were left alone with their poetry:

The blood has soaked the sand, but your spirit survives.

It isn't true. The spirit can die as well.

Serpents slither between the marbles of your House

And the wind blows spirals of sand about the ruins of Hellas

(Antoni Slonimski)

Next year the Imperial War Museum is launching an exhibition on "Women at War". Nothing would be more suitable than a tribute to the heroines of Warsaw - to Elizabeth "Zo", who was parachuted in by SOE, to Krystyna K, the model for Warsaw's Syren statue, who was shot dead whilst rescuing a wounded comrade or to the thousands of underground nurses and couriers.

After the war, all public memory of the Warsaw rising was suppressed in the Soviet bloc. The last commander of the AK, General Okulicki, who had been flown into occupied Poland by the RAF, ended up in a show trial in Moscow for "illegal activities". Thousands of colleagues perished in the Gulag or in communist jails. Though a fine monument was raised to the Heroes of the Ghetto in 1947, no memorial to the Warsaw rising was permitted until 1989. When Chancellor Brandt travelled to Warsaw in 1970 to pay Germany's penance to Poland, there was still no memorial.

The Warsaw rising did not feature in the Nuremburg tribunals. It would have outraged the Soviets and embarrassed the western powers. Instead, SS General Erich Von dem Bach, the butcher of Warsaw and a notorious murderer in the campaign against Soviet partisans, was used as a witness for the prosecution. He escaped scot free.

The exclusion of the Poles from Britain's 1945 victory parade in contrast, may charitably be attributed to muddle. Though the Polish government, our exiled wartime ally, was still in London, invitations were sent to the communist regime in Warsaw. When no response was forthcoming, Ernest Bevin saw the mistake and sent a last-minute apology to Poland's General Anders, living in exile in England. There was no chance to form a contingent. In any case, the Poles knew that for them the war had ended in unmistakable defeat. In Poland, the communists had abolished Independence Day, and replaced it by a so called National Day that celebrated their own accession to power in 1944. In Britain, meanwhile, the survivors of the Warsaw rising who had made their way to our shores after release from German camps, were being refused war pensions.

So, yes we should remember every one of those who died.

· Rising '44 - The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies is published by Macmillan, £25.